


my demons are begging me to open up my mouth

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, F/M, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 05:57:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14182350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: “I need an assassin, Miss Lance.""And you think that's me?""I know it is."(or, a dark Time Canary rewrite of season one and beyond.)





	my demons are begging me to open up my mouth

**Author's Note:**

> AGES AGO (like back when season three just started) I said I was going to write a dark/evil RipSara au, and I just never got around to it. But I got hit by the feels for these two the other night and decided today to go back and finish it all. 
> 
> Apologies for it being unbeta'd and a little messy, it's been a while since I wrote for these two.

_ “Miss Lance? Join me for a drink? I’ve come quite a long way to meet you.” _

 

 

*

 

 

It starts like this. 

In a dirty bar. 

Sitting across from a woman that was about to change everything.

“I’m a danger to others,” Sara insists, not drinking the scotch that he had bought her, just swirling it around the glass and watching him with eyes like a warning. Like she could kill him right now, with nothing more than the glass in her hand. 

He might just let her. 

“I need an assassin, Miss Lance,” he replies. “Not a delicate wallflower, not a superhero, I need someone that would not hesitate when push comes to shove.”

"And you think that's me?"

"I know it is."

Sara seems to hesitate over that.

She wants to be good, desperately, a feeling that Rip can sympathize with. 

He felt that way too, once, so long ago that he can barely remember it now. When he had Miranda and Jonas and a reason to keep pushing on. When he believed that the Time Masters could actually do good. 

“I’ve researched you,” he continues. Methodical, with a purpose. Because he planned this out weighed his options, between a team of nobodies and one woman that he believed he could push just so in just the  _ right  _ direction to get exactly what he wanted. “That feeling inside of you, that  _ urge  _ to kill, the only way to stop it is to feed it until it’s fully sated. I’m offering you a chance to do so, to help you quench that fire that burns within you.”

It’s a small lie.

Just a little.

The notion that he wants to help her, that he wants to cure the bloodlust that burns within her veins rather than fuel it. 

“Why?”

“Why does anyone do anything,” Rip replies, taking his own drink and downing the whole thing. As if that will make this last bit, the one  _ truth  _ he has left, easier to admit. When he finishes, she’s still looking at him, waiting for some sort of answer. “For revenge, of course.”

  
  


 

*

 

 

There is satisfaction in the first time that they kill Vandal Savage. Brief satisfaction, that lasts for a moment, Sara with a wild grin on her face, having enjoyed this probably far more than she should have. Far more than she normally would have let herself. 

There’s blood on her hands, on the knife, on the marble floor beneath them.

He supposes this was the part where he was supposed to have felt satisfied, pleased with the end result, but instead he just feels the need for  _ more _ .

Of course, it doesn’t work.

Savage doesn’t stay dead.

Something Rip had always known, something which normally would have caused a surge of disappointment, but this time watching that wild eager look flash in Sara’s eyes before she plunged the knife back Savage’s body a second time and then a third and then fourth… The disappointment had been replaced with something else entirely. 

Something he was desperate to feel again.

 

 

*

 

 

Sara is vicious.

Sara is anger.

Sara is danger.

Sara is an assassin.

Sara is going to be the death of him.

Sara is pressed up too close against him, too close for comfort, her body against his in a way that another woman's body hasn’t been in far too long. It’s an act, her hand curled around the back of his head, holding him in place  _ kissing  _ him as a distraction, because nobody looked too hard at the couple necking in the corner. 

She shifts closer straddling him almost, the knife strapped to her thigh knocking against his leg as she thrusts up against him. 

The knife that she’ll grab a moment later. To repeat the same useless motion that she’s done each time they’ve encouraged their target throughout time. It won’t work. It never works. And it certainly never sates the bloodlust inside of her, if anything it makes it worse, stronger. 

She’s more vicious than ever.

She’s more cruel than ever.

She’s so much more than he ever expected. 

Sara pulls back from him, her red lipstick smudge at the edge of her lips, a look like  _ lust  _ in her eyes, an urge that Rip wants more than anything to act upon. To say  _ fuck it  _ to his whole quest for revenge, put it on hold just for a moment, just long enough to bend the woman pressed against him over and - 

“I know that’s not a knife,” Sara says, voice sugary sweet, her hips shifting forward closer with intent. 

Rip does not give into the temptation, just pushes her off of him, away from him. “Don’t you have a job to do, Miss Lance, or did I hire you to be fucked?”

Sara laughs at that, a harsh unpleasant sound.

To think that there were people out there who fell in love with her for this laugh.

 

 

*

 

 

It happens more often after that.

Sara closer than ever, more often in his space.

A temptation.

A distraction from a mission that never seems complete. 

Bringing out the worst in him. A part of himself that he hadn’t even known was there, and yet now that he allowed himself to feel it. Allowed the hate and anger to bubble up inside of him. It is easy to do so. To let the hurt that he had let consume him turn into something else entirely.

A bit like bloodlust of his own.

Vicious and cruel and not enough.

Not nearly enough.

 

 

 

*

 

 

“I would advise against that, Captain Hunter.” 

Rip pauses in the middle of his latest plan, another spotting of Savage throughout time, another opportunity. It’s the first time Gideon has spoken in a while with anything other than the barebone facts of whatever time period they would settle on impulsively. 

At least, when Sara was around.

Gideon would talk to him in the privacy of his rooms, insisting that she didn’t like the man that he was becoming, that  _ her  _ captain was better than this. She didn’t approve of Sara, just as she had never entirely approved of Miranda, not liking the idea of another woman being in her captain’s life. 

Sara, for her part, doesn’t like Gideon much either.

“What is she then,” Sara says, gesturing up above them, in a gesture that is clearly meant to indicate Gideon, “Your fucking minder.” 

“You need to shut up,” he hisses at her.

Because it was one thing to do… What they were doing. It was quite another entirely to insult Gideon, who had only even been there for him, who continued to be there for him and continued to check the timeline for him even now when he was quite possibly at his worst. 

Sara grins at him.

That terrible feral grin that makes him wonder why  _ she  _ was the one he had picked up.

What was it about  _ this  _ woman that had compelled him to remove her from the timeline, for better or worse, and to solve his problems by letting her bloody his hands?

“Why don’t you make me,” Sara says.

It’s a challenge.

Everything Sara says is a challenge. 

Lately, he’s had a hard time backing down from them.

 

 

*

 

 

“If you can’t kill them, join them?”

“I have no intention of joining them,” Rip replies, no bothering to keep his disapproval out of his voice as he looks over at Sara.

Sara, who is currently laying out on top of his desk, having knocked all of his knickknacks down to the ground minutes earlier in order to make space to sprawl without a care in the world.

If he was less drunk, if he was less  _ tired  _ of this endless cycle, he may have disapproved of her chosen position more. As it was, all he could focus on was the glass in his hand, and the way her shirt rides up as she stretches her arms out over her head. 

A beautiful expanse of skin, marred by millions of little scars.

Scars that he wants to press his fingers against, pushing against her, as if he could unspool her entire being, take her apart bit by bit until he discovered what sort of monster lay beneath that beautiful demeanor. What demon took up residence in her soul. 

“No,” she says, “I supposed not. Then there’s only one thing to do?”

Rip crosses his office to where she lay, setting his glass down against the flat planes of her stomach.

Watching as the liquid shifts in its glass as she moves, laughing a little at him. 

“And what’s that,” Rip prompts. “What should we do that we haven’t already done?”

Sara’s grin is wild and proud. Like she’s just come up with the greatest idea in all of time. And perhaps she has.

“Let’s blow them all up.” 

  
  


 

*

 

 

They do it.

They blow the whole thing up. 

Watch it burn. Pour out a drink for the poor sap that they’d convinced to take the downfall for them. 

It doesn’t save his family.

It doesn’t save  _ him _ .

But there’s some cruel sort of satisfaction in all of it. In watching everything that he had believed in, everything that he had lost faith in, finally getting exactly what they deserved. 

Revenge tastes sweet against his lips. 

Revenge burns like fire when he swallows it down. 

Revenge catches his eye across the room. 

Revenge pulls him towards her, inevitable finally, crossing the distance between them. Not a kiss to distract, but a kiss with intention, with want and desire and bite. Hands pulling at layers, Sara turns from him and laughs that dark awful sound, the one that makes him want to shut her up.

So he does.

He takes her there over his desk, her nails drawing vicious lines down his back, her mouth biting bruises against his skin. It doesn’t make him feel better, it doesn’t save anyone or bring them back to the people they were before this all started, but it feels like the closest thing to satisfaction that he’s gotten in a long while.

It feels like  _ her _ .

  
  


 

*

 

 

This should’ve been the end. 

It felt like the end.

But Sara is there laying in bed next to him, white sheets falling around her lap, that terrible vicious look in her eyes, as she takes a pen to paper and makes a list of anyone that has ever wronged them. 

“A hit list?”

“I am an assassin,” she reminds him with a feral grin. 

As if he could have somehow forgotten.

 

 

*

 

 

“He killed me.”

“You’re alive now,” Rip points out. 

His hands squeezing down on her hips pointedly. As if she could somehow forget that fact. As if she could somehow forget  _ where  _ they were and  _ what  _ she had interrupted with discussion of her latest plan of attack. 

“I thought this was what we did, get revenge.”

“Is that what we do,” Rip asks, voice laced with just a hint of sarcasm.

A question. 

Genuine, underneath the tone.

He’s not certain what they are anymore.

The timeline is in chaos with no Time Masters to regulate it, and a part of him aches at that, wants to put it all back in order properly as he was trained to do. Another part of him remembers the sting of betrayal, remembers that there’s no proper way to ruin a world that’s wronged them.

“If you loved me, you’d kill him for me,” Sara says pointedly, rolling her hips, drawing him in deeper.

Rip groans, the feeling of her, the movements of her body almost too much. 

“I don’t love you,” he says.

Not a lie.

He doesn’t.

He craves her.

He needs her.

But he doesn't love her. 

Sara doesn’t seem bothered by his words, “It wouldn’t count if you said it now anyways.”

 

 

*

 

 

There’s blood on his hands. 

It’s not the first time he’s killed.

Not the last.

But it’s first time he’s done this for someone other than himself. For something other than his own need to avenge those that he had lost. For something that he didn’t believe in.

He doesn’t need to believe anymore.

Not really.

Blood that smudges red across her cheek when he pulls her in.

 

 

*

 

 

“I’ll kill him.”

“He’s already dead,” Rip points out.

Sara, sharp and anger, hands dirty from the ground that she had dug out as if unearthing the woman buried beneath their feet would have brought her back. As if there was still a pit that she could have tossed her sister into, bring another bloodthirsty Lance sister into his life.

He almost would have welcomed it.

Rip knows too well the feeling that Sara wears on her face, devastation, it burns so often that the only way to forget the hurt was to cause harm to others instead until you forgot how to hurt anymore. 

But sometimes there was nothing more than that. 

He had his own loses. 

His own battle scars.

They’d blown up any chance to fix that, at  _ her  _ suggestion no less. 

“We have a fucking time machine, don’t we?”

 

 

*

 

 

Time breaks, shatters apart, twists into something it shouldn’t be.

It’s understandable. 

With nobody there to regulate it, with nobody there to put time back in line. It’s no wonder that it all falls apart. He’s not even particularly surprised when the time quakes begin to shake the ship, when it all starts to unspool so beautifully.

A part of him thinks this is what they deserve, what all of them deserve, for the trouble they’ve put him through.

Another part of him wants to do better.

To fix things the way they’ve fixed this all. 

 

 

*

 

 

“I hate those things,” Sara says, holding onto the console for support so that she doesn’t stumble over. The latest time quake having been stronger than the ones of the day before.

Another inconvenience. 

“Perhaps, if someone hadn’t-”

“Thank you, Gideon, that’s enough,” Rip says.

Cutting the AI off with a tone harsh enough that Gideon’s only reply is a monotone, “Yes, Captain,” before falling silent. 

Sara purses her lips at him. Silent disapproval. For god knows what now. 

“I hate this,” she says again, eyes meeting him, as if to say that it’s  _ him  _ that she hates.

Sometimes he feels the same.

He tries to ignore her. Ignore her tone. Ignore her want to fight.

They’ve got time to fix, just a little, just enough, a bandaid to apply just right to make these quakes quiet for at least a little while. 

But he can’t help himself. 

Not when he knows how a fight always ends.

“You shouldn’t have saved Laurel,” he says.

Sara’s voice is just as bitter and cruel, “You shouldn’t have recruited me.” 

 

 

*

 

 

They fight.

And they fuck.

And they fix time enough to get away with all the killing. 

And that feels fine.

That feels like enough.

 

 

*

 

 

“You can’t kill the Queen of France,” Sara says, her voice like a teasing sing song, “That’d cause an anomaly.” 

“An anachronism,” he corrects. Even though he knows that Sara knows the word. She’s doing this just to rile him up.

Just like she had done the Queen for that exact same purpose. 

To tempt him into killing this woman for daring to touch something that was his.

For daring to touch Sara.

Sara just grins at him, voice sweet as sugar as she says, “Oops. My bad.”

  
  


 

*

 

 

Later he reminds her who she belongs to.

The second they’re back on the Waverider, he takes her there hard against the cargo bay doors.

Exactly the way she had been wanted, exactly the way she had been pushing him towards. Clothing, costumes, period accurate fall to the ground like nothing. 

Desperate with his need to get his hands upon her. 

To get inside of her. 

To claim her as his own. 

“Mine,” he says, over and over endlessly between thrusts, “Mine.”

“Yours,” she promises in turn, “Yours.”

 

 

*

 

 

“What are we?”

The question comes in the middle of the night

“What do you mean?”

“Super villains,” Sara asks, “Time Pirates? I mean, what should I put on my resume.”

She’s naked and teasing him, and he wants nothing more than to roll over, and push her down into the sheets, make her forget all about whatever sill notion has gotten into her head this time. He resists, only just barely, watches in instead, watches the wheels in her head moving and shifting. 

Before finally she seems to come to some sort of result.

An answer that will make herself happy.

Rip doesn’t need that, doesn’t need answers or excuses, not when he has the woman he loves - beautiful and cruel and his - in bed beside him.

But he lets her have this. 

“We were never meant to be heroes,” Sara says after a moment, “Let’s go down in infamy as Legends.”

  
  


*

 

 

It ends like this.

Sara holding the spear of destiny. 

Grinning at him like a god damned fool.

There’s a moment where he considers all that  they could change.

He could go back to the beginning of this. Back before he knew what it felt like to have Sara beside him, underneath him, killing for him. He could bring Miranda and Jonas back, could go home. After all, wasn’t that the reason they started this game? 

But then he looks at Sara, with her wicked smile, and the bloodlust in her eyes. 

Sara who says, “Let’s fix your precious time.”

He’s never been able to deny her anything. 

“What do you have in mind?”

  
  


*

 

 

_ “I’m Director Hunter of the Time Bureau. Do you have any last words? _ ” 


End file.
